(please join us online or in person, starting today, 3pm sharp, South
Africa time; i.e. about 100 min from now)
*The **G20**G19**-from-below webinar, University of Johannesburg*
12 February – 26 March, Wednesdays, 3-5:30pm SA time
Weekly Zoom <https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82726180745> location:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82726180745__
Weekly in-person location: *UJ Anthropology and Development Studies
Seminar Room (D Ring 506), Auckland Park *(except March 5, in the
Humanities Common Room C Ring 319)
OPENING WEBINAR PAPER: 12 February, 3pm SA time:
“*The G20 and BRICS in Global Sociocultural Evolution*”
•*Christopher Chase-Dunn*, Distinguished Professor of Sociology and
Director of the Institute for Research on World-Systems, the University
of California-Riverside.
•*Şakin Erin*, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Science
and Arts of Oklahoma
Plus activist inputs from:
•*Zwelinzima Vavi, *General Secretary of the South African Federation of
Trade Unions and author of the paper
<https://saftu.org.za/archives/8766>, “On the Second Coming of Donald
Trump: An Analysis of his Historical Record and his Inaugural Remarks,”
https://saftu.org.za/archives/8766
•*Jenny Ricks*, Johannesburg-based General Secretary of the Fight
Inequality Alliance, an international civil society lobby group against
the ultra-rich, doing taxation advocacy
<https://www.fightinequality.org/news/economists-and-activists-brazil-south-africa-call-global-financial-reforms>
within the G20:
https://www.fightinequality.org/news/economists-and-activists-brazil-south-africa-call-global-financial-reforms
(Hosts: Patrick Bond – [email protected] – and Trevor Ngwane,
[email protected])
From February 12 to March 26, the University of Johannesburg
Departments of Sociology and Anthropology and Development Studies –
joined by the UJ Centre for Social Change and civil society partners –
will host a series of seminars aimed at developing a more sophisticated,
critical analysis of the G20 (which may soon be called G19 given the
Trump regime’s retreat), in advance of the November 2025 leaders’ summit
in Sandton.
The format will allow for discussion of seminar papers that rigorously
consider the South African official hosting themes: ‘Solidarity,
Equality and Sustainability’ – words which so frightened the U.S. State
Department that Marco Rubio is boycotting the Feb 20-21 foreign
ministers’ meeting in Johannesburg. We consider whether or not these
principles can be realised within G20 parameters, for the first 90
minutes; followed by another 60 minutes to debate
state-economy-environment-society relations from the bottom-up,
featuring experiences of local-to-global progressive activists.
The context includes:
•1) persistent failures of G20 and multilateral top-down governance in
climate management (UNFCCC), trade (WTO), finance (IMF and World Bank),
pandemic control (World Health Organisation) and geopolitical stability
(UN Security Council and General Assembly) with no prospects of genuine
reform, and with the destruction of the US Agency for International
Development (especially its PEPFAR provision of AIDS medicines) and
retreat from UN agencies and international trade signaling the Trump
Administration’s isolationism;
•2) a fast-shifting balance of political forces featuring the rise of
‘populist nationalist’ – also known as ‘paleo-conservative’ – forces and
ideology within three leading G20 governments (the United States,
Argentina, Italy) and other parts of the European Union, in contrast to
vaguely-defined ‘multipolar’ politics (the rapidly-expanding BRICS bloc
as well as the potentially-affiliated autocracies Saudi Arabia and
Turkiye), amidst durable neoliberal and neoconservative regimes (UK,
France, Germany, Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea), and the
beleaguered social democratic tradition (Mexico) – in many cases
witnessing bitter contestations from progressive social movements, but
also a major rift between Washington and Pretoria, in which
racially-charged, inaccurate allegations from Trump-Musk-Rubio require
fresh understandings of U.S. imperialist motivations;
•3) extreme inequality especially in South Africa (the world’s worst)
and Brazil, and across the globe as the top 20 most profitable firms are
now dominated by U.S. and Chinese ‘techno-feudal’ Big Data and banks and
by Western and BRICS fossil fuel interests, in turn generating
unprecedented power over states by associated tycoons (e.g.
Johannesburg-Pretoria native Musk), social surveillance, reactionary
political and volatile-speculative financial machinations, and rising
greenhouse gas emissions;
•4) a stalling of corporate globalisation – a ‘deglobalisation’ process
that began with the 2008 world financial crisis, just as the G20 took
its current form – such that protectionist, xenophobic paleo-con
tendencies render neoliberal trade, finance, direct-investment and
labour-migration processes less effective, and as both ‘culture wars’ –
featuring revanchist misogyny, racism, homophobia and transphobia – and
super-exploitative economic processes (‘accumulation by dispossession’
especially of natural resources and migrant labour) are more decisively
waged against already oppressed peoples, classes and ecologies;
•5) conflict associated with G20 aggressors (in non-G20 sites) – from
Ukraine to Palestine to Sudan to Myanmar, and perhaps soon also from
Panama to Greenland – as both neo-conservative Western regimes and
expansionist BRICS armies spend record amounts of fiscal resources on
militarisation; and
•6) doubts about leadership sincerity raised by worsening injustices at
home, in the host country (recently subjected to the Stilfontein
Massacre of mainly immigrant mineworkers) and nearly all other G20
countries – many of which are undergoing classical austerity programmes
– the most extreme of which is being managed by Musk in the U.S., but
with South Africans also suffering a 18.1% per capita state-services
shrinkage in the 2020-26 period.
What framing is needed? As one example, the ‘world system’ has been
identified by Samir Amin and Immanuel Wallerstein (regular Johannesburg
visitors prior to their 2018 and 2019 deaths). It contains a ‘core’
metropole economy and a ‘semi-periphery’ – which are mainly conjoined in
the G20 – and a periphery. Within the core and semi-periphery, as well,
can be found a ‘Global South’ of exploited peoples and more rapid
despoliation of natural environments. Another sociologist, Michael
Burawoy (who received an honorary doctorate from UJ in 2022), died on
February 3, will always be remembered as a public intellectual who
celebrated social-movement challenges to unjust capitalist social
relations, from local to global.
It is from this bottom-up standpoint that our webinars will proceed, as
a means of asking difficult questions about whether the G20 network can
serve society’s public interest and preserve the natural environment for
future generations.
/And if it cannot, what should progressive movements and scholars do, in
reaction?/
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